


The Obvious (Re)Solution

by Lumelle



Series: The Way Things Ought to Be [8]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers Family, Cute Kids, Families of Choice, Getting Together, M/M, New Year's Eve, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Uncle Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 15:29:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5631589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lumelle/pseuds/Lumelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's New Year's eve, and Tony and Steve are throwing a party. Tony has his own reasons for a private gathering, but Steve just enjoys having the team together. If he has strange thoughts about seeing Tony happy with their friends and said friends' kids, though, nobody has to know.</p><p>Okay, so maybe Tony has to know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Obvious (Re)Solution

**Author's Note:**

  * For [asario](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asario/gifts).



> Written for [Asario](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Asario) as a belated Christmas present. I hope you like it, dearest!

"Well, then!" Tony clapped his hands together as he walked in, glancing around. "Is everything in order?"

"Far as I can see, at least." Steve finished arranging the bowls of snacks on the large table filled with various kinds of food. Around him the rest of the large space was decorated for a party, with a smaller table bearing juice and soda some ways away and seats scattered all around. "Jarvis is handling the music, right?"

"Naturally." Tony stole a chip from a bowl, utterly ignoring Steve's disapproving gaze, and stuck it into his mouth. "Were we supposed to have toys or something for the kids? Aren't they going to get bored?"

"Nah. They'll have plenty of people to play with, and their parents all said they'd be bringing some toys just in case. I also made sure there's a quiet room nearby in case they need a nap; I rather doubt the twins are going to stay up very late, for one." Not that the babies had ever seemed to have any trouble falling asleep in the middle of the worst the Avengers could offer, but better safe than sorry.

"Ah, that's my Captain, always prepared for everything." Tony stole another chip before continuing his stroll around the room. "We've got hot food, too, right?"

"Yeah, everything's ready in the closest kitchen, we just have to heat everything up and carry it here." Which would no doubt draw plenty of eager volunteers. If there was something their team could do, it was eat. Sometimes Steve barely even remembered he was supposed to have an overly active metabolism; Bucky and Thor were certainly his equals in eating and Pietro could beat them all if he set his mind to it.

"Excellent. And drinks?"

"All ready." Steve nodded towards the table in question. "We've got water, tea, coffee, and several kinds of juice and soda. Nothing alcoholic, except the champagne toasts for midnight, and those have the sparkling juice alternative." He'd almost expected some people to protest when they'd first mentioned that the team party would be almost entirely dry, but nobody seemed to have a problem with it. Though then, they all knew perfectly well why this was.

"Excellent." Tony nodded. "I'd say I can look after myself, but since I'm one of the people throwing the party and there's nobody I need to impress, seems fair to me I get not to worry about watching myself the whole evening."

"Right." Steve felt he should have said something else, should have commented on Tony's accomplishment or given some other contribution to the discussion, but somehow he feared whatever he said would turn out condescending. Instead, he settled for the question that had been bothering him for a while now. "You know, you never told me why."

"Why what?" Tony lifted his eyebrows. "Why I stopped drinking? I highly doubt you're unaware, considering the number of times you were the one tutting disapprovingly over my drunken ass."

"No, I don't mean the general principle." Not that he particularly liked to dwell on it, either. He had indeed seen Tony in the bottom of a bottle more than once, and would be quite happy if he never saw it again. "Just, what made you make the final decision? I somehow doubt it was anything someone else said." Not because Tony never listened, but, well, he wasn't exactly the best at taking life advice, and liked to be downright contrary at times.

Tony was quiet for a while. When he spoke, it was with a lower voice than before, but still clear enough that Steve didn't need his super hearing to make out the words. "You know I was a mess after I broke up with Pepper."

"I do." Steve swallowed. He remembered that time period far too well, had dug Tony out of a bottle more than once.

"Now, don't take me wrong, I think it was the best solution for us both. Doesn't mean I took it well at the time, which you probably noticed." Tony looked over to where Dummy was carefully trying and failing to get a balloon string attached to a couch. His gaze was weirdly intense, though Steve rather doubted he was seeing his beloved bot at all. "Then came the time when the situation was so bad, you had to call in Iron Man."

"I remember that." Wasn't likely to forget. "That thing in Latveria. Sam went silent for so long, I had to stop Scott from trying t stage an invasion all on his own." Never mind all the other unfortunate coincidences that had all piled up to a truly disastrous mission.

"Right. And here I was, sitting all the way across the ocean in my cozy little lab and getting drunk off my ass because my very beautiful and very smart friend made the best decision of her life and decided not to enable my bad choices any longer."

"You came through, though, as soon as you could fly over." He wasn't going to comment on Tony's view of the break-up. He wasn't privy to the actual details, but he did know that both Tony and Pepper seemed to think it had been for the best, and had worked their way to an easy if sometimes teasing friendship.

"Except I didn't." Tony folded his arms across his chest. "I know my suit was there, and my voice, too. Except I was still in my lab, the suit was all Jarvis and Friday working together. Not because I didn't want to come, mind, but because I've long since started installing overrides on all my new suits that prevent me from activating them if my blood alcohol levels are too high."

Steve blinked. This was news to him. Sure, Iron Man hadn't exactly hung around afterwards, but then they'd all been pretty shaken after that particular incident. "But — that's amazing, Tony!"

"It's pathetic, is what it is." Tony shook his head. "You needed me, but I was too messed up to come, and the fact that I have awesome AIs doesn't change any of that. So, once the situation was over with and everyone was accounted for, I decided that was the last time."

"That's… wow." Steve blinked. "Tony, that's incredible!"

"It was a long time coming, is what it is." Tony snorted, taking some candy from the bowl he had insisted would be for the kids. "And anyway, drinking on this team is just depressing. Everyone's either in a hurry to get home to their kids, or could drink a whale under the table. You know how big a table I'd need to fit a whale under it? Too big for the Tower, that's how big. A terrible structural hazard, too, putting in that much weight, better leave the whales out altogether and then who would you be drinking against? Not poor human me, that's for sure. So, clearly it's better to go along with the responsible shit and stop altogether."

"I think you've gotten a bit too caught up in your metaphors, there."

"And I think I own most of the place so I get to decide the number of aquatic mammals brought in for the sake of drinking contests. Really, Cap, that's downright animal cruelty, how are they even going to hold a glass? I expected better of you."

Steve could have continued the discussion there, tried to make the tone lighter at least after the serious turn it had taken, except Tony was already turning around to do something else and then Jarvis was informing them the others were starting to arrive. Which, really, about half of the guests lived in the Tower already, but that was apparently no obstacle to them arriving at the last minute. Not that Steve was complaining, he had happily agreed to taking care of the arrangements together with Tony, part of being a team leader and all that, but it did amuse him somewhat.

He was never not going to be amused at Pietro's ability to be just a little bit late to everything. It had to be intentional, considering his speed, and such a show of petty defiance in a grown man was going to be either amusing or annoying. Deciding to be amused was probably going to work better for him in the long run.

Besides, he was fairly sure that annoyed Pietro, and he wasn't quite above enjoying that.

The party wasn't very big, certainly not by Tony Stark standards. They had mostly invited the team and some of the associated people, along with their families, of course. It was a compromise of sorts, since Steve had wanted a holiday party of some description, while most of the team wanted to spend Christmas with their loved ones or just didn't celebrate Christmas at all. Tony had been the one to suggest a team New Year's party, which had somewhat surprised him.

He would have expected Tony to want to spend the night at one of the larger parties, but he'd pointed out that attending one of those would have meant dealing with the media. Which was something Tony had done a lot of over the years, of course, he was one of their best public faces, but apparently this was different.

Now, watching Tony nursing a glass of non-alcoholic punch, he suspected he knew the reason. Not only would Tony have had to be watching himself and every drink he took, but everyone else would have been keeping an eye on it, too. Here, nobody thought any further on it.

There weren't that many kids in the end — Clint and Laura's three, Wanda and Vision's twins, and Scott's little Cassie — but they certainly seemed like an absolute hoard, running about and making noise. Not that anyone minded, though. They knew who they could bug and who was best left alone, and in any case, the more they ran around now, the sooner they would tire themselves out.

Besides, anyone who couldn't deal with a bit of noise and the occasional collision risk probably shouldn't have been dealing with the Avengers in the first place.

As it was, though, there was the occasional kid-related incident. Steve had just finished a talk with Sam about the specs for the new shooting range they were planning for the main facility and headed for the snacks table when he spotted Tony being the hero he obviously was and intervening in the grand future Avenger Nate Pietro Barton's attempt at taking flight from the back of a couch. This could have led to a tantrum, of course, a three-year-old was not the best case scenario for gratitude after a rescue, but instead Tony swirled him in the air for a bit while making engine noises before setting the kid down and letting him run off.

"You handled that well."

Tony turned to look at Steve, smirking a bit. "Yeah, well, kind of had to, or Legolas would use me for target practice. Which wouldn't matter much except I made him those EMP arrows, and now I'm kind of afraid of pissing him off if there's any chance I might be going out in a suit anytime soon."

"I didn't mean stopping him from jumping, I mean the way you made sure he wouldn't start crying about not getting to fly." Steve came to a halt next to Tony, looking over to where Nate had joined his siblings and Cassie in a rather chaotic game that seemed to consist mostly of running between the gathered adults and making a lot of noise. "You ever think of having kids of your own?" It wasn't the first time he'd thought of it, really, but he hadn't ever really brought up the topic before.

Tony shrugged. "In another life, maybe. Here, it never quite worked out that way."

"What do you mean?" Something in the way Tony said that made him suspect there was more to this than mere inclination.

"Well, first I just figured it wasn't for me, and I was right. I couldn't even look after myself for most of my life, never mind be responsible for another person. Besides, I was more or less convinced it was impossible for a Stark to ever be a decent father; I wasn't about to test that theory with some poor kid."

Steve nodded. He wasn't about to argue with Tony about this; he'd heard enough stories about Tony's earlier life to rather agree with his assessment.

"Then… well. By the time I was convinced maybe I wasn't doomed to be a terrible father, and actually found a person I might've wanted to have a stable life with, I'd already messed up my body too much." Tony tapped his fingertips against his chest, at the spot where his arc reactor used to be. Steve had seen it now, had seen the new tissue that was a true miracle of science, almost impossible to tell apart from the rest of his chest aside from the circular scar surrounding it. Tony couldn't seem to shake the old habit, though. "Palladium poisoning's no laughing matter. I survived, but not all of me did." He snorted, though he didn't sound very amused. "For most of my life I would've been ecstatic for a guarantee that I would never father a child. When I found out I actually couldn't anymore, I was gutted. Funny how that works, huh?"

"Priorities change over time. That's just natural." Steve paused. "You never thought of, well, other ways?"

"Briefly." Tony shrugged. "Adoption's tricky, though, and required the kind of time and focus we just didn't have at the time. Then, well… then it all came to an end, anyway." Then he had broken up with Pepper. "So, maybe it's for the best we never did anything about the kid situation."

"I don't know. I think you would be a good father."

"I'd be one with a lot of issues, to be sure. Between that and the fact I can't seem to stop playing hero no matter what, well, maybe it's for the best that I just stay the cool uncle. I can play with them and spoil them a little, and at the end of the day they go back to their parents, and nobody has to suffer if it turns out shitty parenting actually is a hereditary trait." Tony's eyes were soft as he watched little Nate climbing all over Clint, though. "And you? Ever thought of little mini-Caps running around, being all blond and blue-eyed and adorable?"

"Honestly? Not really." Steve shook his head. "Before the serum, I couldn't be sure I would survive the year, never mind even dream of a family. After… well. I did think about it sometimes, I guess, but it was always just a distant dream, something that would happen when the war was over and not before. And then the war ended, except I wasn't there."

"You've been out of the ice for quite a few years now, though."

"I have, but it doesn't seem I can stop fighting just yet." He allowed Tony a faint smile. "Besides, from what anyone can tell me, the serum didn't actually change my genetics. Even with modern medicine I wouldn't ever wish my poor health on an innocent kid. And as for other methods, well. I'm not sure I could balance my work with a family, anymore."

"Seems a pity, though. I bet you'd be a great father."

"Suppose you'll just have to share your cool uncle spot." Steve grinned. "Speaking of which, how about we go and take the twins for a bit? I think Wanda and Vision wouldn't mind a moment of not having to make sure Tommy doesn't somehow manage to get through a window or Billy doesn't climb on top of a shelf somewhere."

"I'd like to think Jarvis would intervene before his beloved nephews got anywhere near actual danger, but sure. Let's go steal them for a bit." Tony grinned. "I haven't given up on getting them to say my name before they say Pietro's."

"And if that ever actually happens, I fully expect Pietro to carry you off to some deserted island and leave you there for a few days."

"Hey, could be worse. If I still had the arc reactor I'd have to worry about getting sand or water in it." And with this and a grin, Tony was striding over to where Wanda, Laura and Scott were apparently discussing the fine art of getting children to keep their clothes on.

Yes, sometimes Steve was rather glad for his role as the perpetual uncle.

As it turned out, Wanda and Vision were more than happy to have a moment to mingle without constantly keeping an eye on their increasingly mobile sons. The twins had both progressed from walking to a kind of teetering run, and while they were hardly as fast as their uncle, they seemed to get just about anywhere the moment adults stopped watching them. Steve scooped up Tommy, who looked like he was contemplating escape any moment now, then turned to look at Tony.

He very nearly forgot to breathe.

Tony had picked up Billy, who had abandoned his earlier pastime of banging a toy against the couch in favor of stroking Tony's beard with his tiny hand, making awed little sounds. Tony was grinning at him, murmuring something before rubbing his beard against a tiny baby cheek, making Billy squeal. For a moment, Steve almost forgot where he was, all his focus on Tony, a smiling, happy Tony and the baby he would never have, the child of another member of this motley crew that had started as a team and has slowly become a family of sorts. It was Steve's family too, of course, his anchor in this new world where he still sometimes felt so out of place, and Tony was at the center of that. Snarky, sharp, sarcastic Tony, who had a hundred bad habits and a heart more heroic than any Steve had ever known, who was at once self-centered and utterly selfless just as he was both dazzlingly brilliant and strangely oblivious to certain things.

It was probably a good thing that Tommy chose this moment to tug sharply at his hair and draw him out of his epiphany, or someone would surely have spotted the look on his face. He wasn't quite ready for everyone to know just how badly in love he was, not when he had only barely realized it himself.

Oh God. He was in love with Tony Stark.

He somehow managed to push that to the background as he focused on the very attention-grabbing child in his arms, and then got drawn into an in-depth conversation about various weapons with a few other members of the team. Pietro still remained unconvinced that he actually needed anything more than his hands, which, granted, was a fair point from someone who could punch at the speed of sound. Of course, Sam was of the opinion that he could be even more devastating with some firearms, while Scott was in favor of the unarmed option, with Natasha coming down in the middle of the argument. It all ended with very little in the way of conclusions, and everyone was being very friendly about the whole thing, so Steve didn't need to actually get into his Captain mode about the issue and could just enjoy a teasing little conversation between fire-forged friends.

There were other conversations after, and other people and a lot of laughter, and not a single actual fight for all that there was a rather worrying wrestling match between Thor and Bucky for the ownership of the last cupcake, which ended up getting stolen by Clint while they were otherwise occupied. By the time evening had turned to night and most of the children had fallen asleep Steve found himself standing next to Tony as they all gathered on the balcony, ready to see the fireworks display that Tony had arranged.

"You know, it's weird." Tony ran a hand over his hair, standing close enough to Steve he imagined he could feel the heat of Tony's arm next to his. "This is probably the first new year I've greeted sober since I was a teen."

"Well, there are worse streaks to break." The people around them were starting to break off in pairs, where there were pairs to be formed, with the single people mingling about. Dummy had whirred out to hand out the celebratory drinks, with Jarvis' voice carrying out to inform them of the approaching midnight. Tony didn't even seem to think about the fact he was handed a different type of glass than Steve, one with the sparkling juice that was also handed out to the couple of kids who had managed to make it awake this far, or perhaps he was just doing his best not to notice.

"I suppose so." Tony was smiling, that small smile that was almost a smirk that Steve liked so much better than his publicity smile. It meant that he was actually happy and relaxed, and it was far too rare a sight for Steve's liking. "Any resolutions you're making for the new year, my dear Captain?"

"I'm not sure." Steve shrugged. "I rather like my life as it is."

"Really?" There was something strange in Tony's voice, in his eyes when Steve glanced at him. "Nothing at all you would change?"

He looked at Tony, at his friend and teammate and rival all, and all of a sudden it became absolutely clear what he ought to do.

As Jarvis came toward the end of his countdown, he drew Tony into his arms. There was no resistance, not even a word, just a raised eyebrow and something that almost seemed like an eye roll before Tony leaned in to close up the remaining distance between them.

Perhaps it was old-fashioned, kissing someone at midnight on New Year's Eve, but then Steve was all about the old-fashioned stuff.


End file.
